A man faces charges across two states after tens of thousands of dollars worth of golf clubs stolen from a central Florida golf club were uncovered in his Bluffton-area storage unit, according to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
Beaufort resident Patrick Michael Cureton, 26, was charged by local deputies Feb. 24 with two felony counts of receiving stolen goods, inmate records show. He also has outstanding arrest warrants in Osceola County, Florida, for burglary, grand larceny and criminal mischief, a BCSO incident report says.
His Florida warrants stem from an overnight theft of an estimated $50,000 worth of golf clubs from the Celebration Golf Club in Kissimmee, Florida, general manager Ryan Tamini told police last month. He assessed an additional $10,000 in damage to the building, according to the report. Collaborating with investigators from Florida, Beaufort County deputies found a trove of stolen golf merchandise in Cureton’s storage units at Monster Self Storage off Bluffton Parkway, the incident report says. Police linked the items not only to last month’s Celebration Golf Club burglary, but other previously unsolved thefts both locally and in Florida.
How he was caught
Surveillance footage from the Florida golf club in the early morning of Feb. 10 showed a “tall thin male” parking at the building and using a sledgehammer to shatter the doors into the club’s storage and office rooms. He wore gloves and a face mask, the police report says…